John Mctiernan

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Born:
Jan 08, 1951

'John Campbell McTiernan, Jr.' (born January 8, 1951) is an American filmmaker, best known for his action films and most identifiable with the three films he directed back-to-back: the science fiction action film Predator (1987), the action film Die Hard (1988), which has sometimes been called one of the greatest action movies ever made, McTiernan had been in a disagreement
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John Mctiernan

'John Campbell McTiernan, Jr.' (born January 8, 1951) is an American filmmaker, best known for his action films and most identifiable with the three films he directed back-to-back: the science fiction action film Predator (1987), the action film Die Hard (1988), which has sometimes been called one of the greatest action movies ever made, McTiernan had been in a disagreement with Roven about what type of film Rollerball should be, and had hired Pellicano to investigate Roven's intentions and actions. He had asked Pellicano to try to find instances where Roven made negative remarks about the studio executives or said things to others what were inconsistent with what he said to the studio. He was arraigned and pleaded guilty on April 17, 2006, as part of an initial plea bargain agreement to cooperate with prosecutors in exchange for lenient treatment. Prosecutors said they then became convinced that he was continuing to lie to them and that he had also hired Pellicano to wiretap someone else – probably his estranged wife Donna Dubrow during their 1997 divorce, and they decided to seek a prison sentence. He then hired new counsel and tried to withdraw his guilty plea – saying his prior counsel had not conducted a proper discovery in the case and had not presented him with the available defense approach of suppressing as evidence the conversation with him that Pellicano had recorded on August 17, 2000, but this bid was denied by the Federal District Judge, Dale S. Fischer, who immediately proceeded to sentence him to four months in prison and $100,000 in fines. The judge characterized McTiernan as someone who thought he was "above the law", had shown no remorse, and "lived a privileged life and simply wants to continue that". He was ordered to surrender for incarceration by January 15, 2008, but was allowed to remain out of prison on bail pending an appeal to the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals. In October 2008, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals vacated McTiernan's four-month sentence and ruled that Judge Fischer had erred and he was entitled to a hearing as to whether his plea could be withdrawn. The prosecution (and the judge) then agreed to allow McTiernan to withdraw his plea rather than proceed with such a hearing, and his plea was withdrawn on February 24, 2009. With the case reopened, the prosecution was no longer bound by the prior plea agreement, and filed additional charges against McTiernan, charging him with two counts of lying to the FBI (one count for claiming he had hired Pellicano only in connection with his divorce proceedings and another for denying he had ever discussed wiretapping with Pellicano) and one count of committing perjury during the previous court proceedings by denying he had been coached by his attorney on what to say during his previous guilty plea hearing (a denial that he later signed a declaration saying was false). After some adverse rulings on his attempted defense arguments, and facing the possibility of a prison sentence of more than five years on the various charges, McTiernan eventually entered another guilty plea (on all three counts) in a second plea bargain in 2010, conditioned on his plan to appeal the earlier rulings against his defense approach, and Judge Fischer sentenced him to one year in prison, three years of supervised probation, and a fine of $100,000. The judge said that the increased length of the prison sentence was related to the additional, more serious charge of perjury before her court, that McTiernan's crimes were more than just a momentary lapse of judgment, that he still did not seem to have really accepted responsibility for his actions, and that she would have issued an even more lengthy prison sentence if the prosecution had not recommended less. McTiernan was then released on bail pending an appeal of the adverse rulings. On August 20, 2012, the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals affirmed the district court judgment, but allowed McTiernan to address the U.S. Supreme Court regarding his attempt to suppress the recorded conversation before being required to report to prison. McTiernan's defense had tried to argue that Pellicano had made the recording for an unlawful purpose and that this made it inadmissible, but the district and appeals courts disagreed with that interpretation of the rules of evidence. On January 14, 2013, the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. McTiernan surrendered to federal prison on April 3, 2013, to serve a stated 12-month sentence in the Federal Prison Camp, Yankton, in Yankton, South Dakota, a minimum-security former college campus holding about 800 male mainly white-collar criminal offenders. His Bureau of Prisons registration number was 43029-112. Although the Yankton facility was rated by Forbes magazine as one of "America's 10 cushiest prisons", during his incarceration his wife said it was very hard for him and that he had lost and was suffering from depression and completely emotionally "disintegrating" there. His supporters created a "Free John McTiernan" campaign page on Facebook, including expressions of support from notable Hollywood figures such as actor-producers Samuel L. Jackson and Alec Baldwin and director Brad Bird. He was released from prison on February 25, 2014, after 328 days of incarceration, to serve the remainder of his 12-month prison sentence under house arrest at his ranch home in Wyoming until April 4, 2014. As of May, 2014, the lawsuit remained active, with a trial scheduled for December 2014 but likely to be postponed. The bank holding the mortgage on the ranch said the filing was a bad-faith tactic only intended to stall the foreclosure proceedings, and requested the presiding judge to convert the case to a chapter 7 bankruptcy – a more drastic form of bankruptcy that would give the bank the power to demand the liquidation of assets rather than requiring them to negotiate with McTiernan. McTiernan's lawyers countered by saying that his potential for generating additional future income from new projects could enable him to eventually repay his debts, so a rapid liquidation of assets would be unnecessary and unjustified. In the bankruptcy proceedings, he identified two likely future film projects with Hannibal Pictures, with working titles Red Squad and Warbirds, with large budgets and significant likely future income and planned to star major well-known actors.